Center for Advanced Solar Photophysics

About the Center for Advanced Solar Photophysics

The overarching goal of the Center is to explore novel concepts for converting solar light into electricity or chemical fuels through rational design of nanoscale structures guided by theory and modeling. Center researchers explore and exploit the unique physics of nanostructured materials to boost the efficiency of solar energy conversion through novel light-matter interactions, controlled excited-state dynamics, and engineered carrier-carrier coupling.

The Center conducts its research through interrelated efforts in advanced spectroscopy and theory of nanoscale materials, "physics-driven" synthesis, and exploratory devices.

The interrelated efforts of the Center for Advanced Solar Photophysics are united into a single goal.

Long-Term Vision

The vision of the Center is to focus on novel physics, materials, and architectures for harvesting solar light and converting it into electrical charges with efficiencies at or above equilibrium thermodynamic limits.

Solving the global energy challenge requires revolutionary breakthroughs in areas such as the conversion of solar energy into electrical power or chemical fuels. The principles for capturing solar light and converting it into electrical charges have not changed for more than four decades. Advances have mostly relied on incremental improvements in material quality and device engineering.

But our society's growing demand for clean energy can only be met through technologies that are "disruptive"—that use radically new physical principles and materials to approach thermodynamic efficiency limits in solar-energy conversion. The Center is using a strong, interdisciplinary, multi-group effort to tackle this huge, fundamental challenge of modern science.

Five-Year Goals

Three primary goals of the Center are to:

Develop practical approaches to meet or exceed Shockley-Queisser equilibrium thermodynamic efficiency limits for converting photons into electrical charges. These approaches may include carrier multiplication (generation of multiple excitons by single photons), plasmonic field-enhancement, band-structure engineering, and dynamic control of the energy gap via Coulomb interactions.

Physics-driven synthesis is critical to each of these three goals. Center researchers identify and develop promising nanoparticles and assemblies based on the most up-to-date understanding of the physics. They target novel nanoparticle compositions, shapes, surface properties, and hybrids for their usefulness. They also investigate novel means to functionalize and assemble materials for efficient use.

Learn more about how the Center is organized to accomplish its mission, and read background information about the partner institutions and their principal investigators.